Guilt’s Asylum
by Desenchanter
Summary: The mind must find a way to protect itself, to create illusions to shoulder the burden of the guilt a girl cannot bear. After killing a loved one—by mistake, wasn’t it?—she was sent away to an institute for help. A touch of IxK romance. A strange one-shot


**Summary**: The mind must find a way to protect itself, to create illusions to shoulder the burden of the guilt a girl cannot bear. So she was sent away to an institute for help, over killing a loved one—by mistake, though, wasn't it? A touch of IxK romance.

_**A/N:**_ This is part of my series of… odd, to say the least, fanfics. So you've been forewarned, it's not your typical story, I hope it plays with your mind some. The first half is in first-person, the last half is not.

**G**uilt's **A**sylum

It's weird, he's disappeared.

It's odd, this whole façade.

It's wrong but somehow I've gotten along.

It's terrible, the guilt's unbearable.

It still seems that he's here, as if he comes to visit me, sometimes I'll find him sitting across the room from me, saying this and that, I can't really understand him, but his eyes still glow so gold, his hair still shimmers in the moonlight—it's always dark, only the star filled sky illuminates my prison when he comes. I feel he's there, really, just a few feet from me, just a hand out and I can touch him, grasp his fists and have him hold me again.

Yet I can never reach out, in fear of the illusion fading. I like it. I don't want it to go.

I know he can't be here, my mate, my husband, my love. He's gone.

I killed him.

You think I'm lying, you think I'm being too harsh on myself, but I do not mean that my actions were the end of my beloved _but _that it was with my own two hands that took his centuries long life away. They still drip with crimson every now and then.

I can still see the stain, no one else can, all say I'm disturbed, that it's not real, none of it is.

_Higurashi Kagome, paging Higurashi Kagome, it's time for a reality check, please come back to the bona fide world._

I get it, I do, but they don't. It sounds absurd, impossible, like a fairy tale. It's not real, it's not possible, that is what they say. Simply because they cannot—_will not_—believe. But I do, I know it's real. They can keep me locked away here, force the pills on me, take me to sessions, evaluate the insanity that is me, it does not matter. I know the truth, that's all that matters.

I belong here; anyway, the pills make dull the pain. It makes me null. I _am_ void without him.

Inuyasha, Inuyasha, Inuyasha… I loved him, I did, with everything I was and everything I ever will be. The bewildered life we led, in search of the shards, to kill the evil—_disgustingrevoltingblasphemy—_Naraku. We were so, so, close to happiness. We couldn't wait; he said he loved me one night under the moonless sky; I gave myself to him fully, that I can't deny. After the season changed we could not wait—_Icouldnotwait—_we wed. For my sake we did, he was a hanyou, you know, part dog demon, part human, so it was half his tradition too, but he was more animalistic, he preferred the idea of mating, so we did that, too, for his sake.

I'd do anything for _his_ sake, like he'd do anything for _mine_.

We were one, _one,_ together forever and always.

That was how it was supposed to be, that bastard, that _hideous _monster, took him, my Inuyasha, I had a shot, I could kill the beast and end our friends' misery—save Miroku, Sango, Kohaku, _everyone_ but at what cost? At the cost of the one I adored, he was wounded—direly, _he shed red everywhere_—and in the way, Naraku held him there to block my efforts.

The blood, it got all over me, staining my uniform. I never got the blemish out. Never.

One shot and it would be done.

One shot and they'd both be dead.

I couldn't but he said to, over and over again, so I did—it was surreal, I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't mean to.

Honestly, I never meant to.

Tears never stop flowing at the thought of that damned day. I returned from his era tattered and as fragmented as the jewel once was. I had finally that made whole, all for naught, it disappeared. Like so much of me… gone. There was nothing my family could do, so they sent me here. The hospital, the asylum that could slowly piece my mind back together…

Do I want them to? Do I want to be sane? Could I be sensible ever again?

At first I didn't tell the doctors the truth, at first I lied, but now… now I tell them the truth, all of it, and though that makes me even more delusional than they thought—or so _they _think—I figure, why not?

Mother doesn't even believe my stories… my brother shakes his head and frowns when I tell them.

They knew Inuyasha, too, why don't they back me up? Why don't they say, 'yes, Kagome, we know what you are talking about'. I'm not asking them to do so in front of the doctors, just to me, just to verify I'm really OK. In my own little way, I am…

The pills I pop willingly, it makes everything better—did I mention that already?

"I'm telling the truth," I always say, "I'm not crazy," ah, but that's the key, isn't? Once you are labeled 'mentally unstable' everything that leaves your mouth is just rambles of an insane person. That's all they think, so my doctor nods his head, says he believes me to calm me down, and scribbles away.

I hate that. It drives me _insane_.

Then _he_ comes back, at night, always at that time, just sitting there, saying this and that to me—_Icannothearhim_—and looking so different each time. Sometimes calm, sometimes sad, sometimes mad. Who knows? Why's he look like that, where's the love?

Before he left he used to always kiss me, hold me, whisper how he loves me, and then go off to fight the demons. Then he'd come back, sometimes injured, sometimes fine, and repeat it all over again. I miss those days. I really, really do…

Mother comes, brother comes, even grandpa comes, I understand what they are saying it just doesn't make any sense. Nothing anyone says does, I shouldn't have come through the well, I should have just stayed. Maybe on the other side I would have had a better life. Perhaps I would have been able to live with the guilt there.

I can't here.

I've only ever tried to end it once, only once, it was a fleeting idea, I didn't actually mean to, I was just so… disturbed that day, I couldn't help myself. A friend of mine from high school sent me flowers, his name is Houjo, it was supposed to be a kind gesture to show people were thinking about me still in the world so far away from me. I don't know, seeing the pretty purple bellflowers only made it worse. I couldn't help that the nurse walked away from the pill cart. I didn't mean to take so many…

I don't know how long ago that was, it was quite a while ago, I feel, and they watch me like a hawk now. I suppose they think I'm suicidal, I don't think I am. I needn't be. I don't know…

What's the point of the world where my Inuyasha just a fright? When he only comes as a ghost to haunt me at night? Tell me I'm right.

Tell me it's OK.

Tell me I'm fine.

Tell me I'm sane.

Tell me you understand.

Tell me, please?

Someone… tell me, I don't want believe their lies. They have so many they try to fill me with. They tricked me once but not again, oh, no, no, no. I'm not delusional, I didn't make this up, it's not a silly 'coping' mechanism, I'm telling the truth

Honestly, I am.

Aren't I?

{~~~~~~}

"Shimizu-sensei," the short, somber haired man sighed as he watched the ebony waved, pale, beauty walk around in aimless circles behind the window that separated their worlds. He couldn't help but shake his head as he folded arms loosened, "will she ever…? Is she even getting better?"

The man beside him with eyes the color of violets shook his head as he pushed his rimless glass up his nose, "I'm sorry, Toashi-san, it does not appear so…"

"But, just last month you said you finally broke through, that she realized what happened," the auburn eyed man countered as his gaze shifted from the window to the doctor.

"Yes, but it appears she reverted back to this state, the truth is just too much for her mind to handle," he explained, "I fear that each time we make that break through it will only be a matter of time before she returns to thinking like this…"

"I don't get it," he muttered with furrowed brows, "I really don't… not at all. Damn it, I should have seen this, we all should have… none of this would have been happening if we had only gotten her help sooner."

"Toashi-san, don't take this out on yourself, it cannot be helped."

"No, I should have paid more attention to the stories she told us about, I just thought they were _stories_, I didn't think she thought they were real… We all just thought she had an overactive imagination, that's all... you know her grandfather blames himself the most? For telling her the tales of that well and the myth of the shikon no tama."

"That can't be to blame, either, her mind is just not well, I don't think it ever will be."

"It's weird… she recognizes her grandpa, mom, and brother but each time I go visit her it's like I'm not there, as if I'm invisible to her… as if I'm speaking a different language, as if I'm a ghost, should I stop seeing her?"

"No, I think that it helps her, I think the day she actually recognizes you as Toashi Isao is the first day to her actually recovery. As of now, she thinks you are a hanyou, that you have silver hair, dog ears, golden eyes, and are part inu youkai. She lives in a delusional word, we all play a part in it, she believes I'm a monk by the name of Miroku that has a cursed hand, she believes that my wife, her nurse, is a demon slayer named Sango, she believes the pill delivery boy is a kitsune youkai by the name of Shippou. Then, she has a completely fictional character as far as I'm aware named Naraku who's responsible for all the evils that have occurred, he's her scapegoat," he explained, "_he's_ the one that killed everyone, the one to blame for everyone's misery. She thinks that because of him she had to shot you, killing you, with an arrow to save the world from him, from 'hell'."

"Yeah, I know, she's told everyone this…"

"I don't know if I really should tell you this but," he murmured some as he rubbed his neck and rotated his stiff neck around, "she also believes she's the reincarnation of Kikyou…"

"Is that so?" he dully replied, a small sigh attached to the end.

"Yes, she believes Naraku killed her… she thinks she played no part in her death. She doesn't even recognize her as blood…"

"Funny," he muttered almost bitterly, "the one she's in here for killing is the one she doesn't _actually _think she did anything to. I didn't know… I should have noticed… but she was just a high school girl, when she flirted I thought it was harmless, she was my sister-in-law, after all, I thought she was just toying with me… I didn't know that she actually…"

"I don't think you are to blame for any of this, Toashi-san, the mind's a fragile thing, I cannot say if it snapped shortly before she shot your wife, after, or if it has always been like this… but I can say, I'll do everything in my power to help her. Maybe someday she'll be able to leave this place... she doesn't not appear to be violent at all, not towards any of the orderlies, not towards me, not towards her family, not towards you… it was just that one fluke. She really won't talk about it; I don't know if we'll ever know what sparked it."

It was hard to believe, that the woman he kissed, embraced, and whispered his love to each day before going off to work and did the exact same to when he returned to a warm meal would never be there again. Higurashi Kikyou, turned Toashi Kikyou, was gone... long gone. That the girl who took that from him was such a sweet, loving, family member that once lived with them while she went to one of the top schools in Tokyo. Was it the stress from what everyone expected from her? Was it something _he_ did? Something his wife did? Or was she always simply one step away from snapping?

At first, he held it against her, at first, he wanted to kill her, at first, he didn't believe her.

Years had passed, though, and he watched how disturbed she really was. She was unstable, she wasn't right in the head, perhaps never would be, so his anger had faded, his wife wouldn't have wanted him to hate her ill younger sister anyway.

Now… all he could do was come to the correctional asylum once a week to visit her, to check up on her, to see that she seemed to only get better to fall into a worse state all over again.

Maybe it was best she lived in her fantasy world filled with demons, monsters, and mayhem, his world was not too far off from that anyway.

Sometimes, he'd even like to join her there, to break from reality… to escape his mentality. Until that day ever came, _if_ it would, he'd be there, once a week, after work, to talk to the girl that never responded, to watch her, to care for her in an odd sort of way, to wish her well... maybe, someday, all would fine again.

Or, perhaps, they'd just have to wait for another life in vane.

* * *

_**A/N:**_ Like I said, weird, right? I got the idea and decided I needed a study break so, why not? It could be better but I'm satisfied with it all the same. I hope you liked it or at least it peeked your interesting at some point. It's not for everyone, I'll say that much. If you did like it, you'd probably like my other one-shot _Broken Bride_.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
